Football fans, beware. "Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano joined NFL and other officials in warning that security for Sunday's game at Lucas Oil Stadium would be significantly heightened…" Whoa! Seems professional games have become so dangerous you’d better stay home this year.

And it isn’t just the Super Bowl. Those big, brawny guys at the NFL’s headquarters are so terrified that they "partnered" months ago with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to protect themselves.

What’s the threat?

You.

Oh, and your kids, too: the "family friendly" NFL ordered all 32 of its clubs last fall to grope every customer entering a stadium, whatever his age, regardless of her condition.

Why are you and John Jr. such a menace? Because on the theory of "deep pockets," corrupt courts have enabled anyone injured to sue not the entity responsible for his harm but the wealthiest one within a 25-mile radius. If an unofficial terrorist attacked one of the NFL’s games, litigious fans could bankrupt the League. (On the other hand, official terrorists may assault fans repeatedly and with impunity, as Sunday proves.)

So in 2009, Our Rulers granted the NFL immunity from such lawsuits in exchange for cooperating with the DHS. Naturally, both parties pretend that molesting you before admitting you to your over-priced seat is a selfless act on their part, purely for your benefit -- despite the studies linking sexual assault with depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and even suicide. But we all know who’s really profiting: the DHS extends its police-state further into our lives while the NFL protects itself from socialism masquerading as justice.

Nor has its conquest of the NFL contented the DHS. It’s also enlisted "Major League Baseball (MLB) teams, [and] the U.S. Open Tennis Championships (USTA)" as "partners" in its "’See Something, Say Something’ public awareness campaign," just as it did the NFL. From there, it’s a short step to frisking those fans, too.

Some of the NFL’s members valiantly sugarcoat the offense against fans. According to the New York Jets, "…[A]ll guests will be subject to a courteous pat-down screening upon entry by Safety Services staff of the same gender. ... Persons that refuse to be patted down … will not be admitted." Nice try, but "guests" paying megabucks aren’t prisoners, nor should they be abused as such.

Yet the NFL has been confusing customers with criminals since 2005, when it claimed to ESPN that molesting selected "guests" would "provide an essential layer of security in an age of constant terrorism threats."

Yeah, right. Personnel usually searched folks suspected of smuggling stuff the NFL’s concessionaires sold and only from the waist up. But not many terrorists tape explosives to their chests while trying to look suspicious.

So the NFL moved the goalposts. For months now, it’s been groping customers above the waist and from knees to ankles. How long before it makes a pass at the end zone as well?

We’ve seen this graduated approach before. The TSA pawed passengers’ arms and legs at airports for years. Then, in 2010, it stole second base, too.

Indeed, the TSA seems to be coaching the NFL. The League parrots the same excuse as the TSA: "Someone somewhere might try something sometime, which gives us a pass to manhandle everybody." Though of course, it doesn’t say it that plainly. Instead, it swiped not only the TSA’s procedures but the jargon that sanitizes this sexual assault: "The enhanced security procedures … will further increase the safety of fans but will require some additional time," a spokesman for the NFL contends.

"Some additional time"? The TSA claims to paw only 3% of passengers, not 100% -- and its lines are the stuff of nightmares. It recently began psychologically searching everyone who passed through its checkpoints at Boston’s Logan Airport, interrogating victims for 30 seconds apiece. These "chat-downs" caused delays of four hours.

Meanwhile, both the NFL and the Super Bowl grossly inconvenience and even more grossly insult "guests" over … nothing.

That’s right: nothing. Mr.-sorry, Mistress Janet immediately denied any menace to the Super Bowl despite pawing patrons; so did the NFL when dictating its new policy: "the ‘enhanced security procedures’ are not a result of any specific threat, but the league is ‘always refining and improving’ security."

Oh, they’re refining and improving, all right. Not only do the sheeple no longer object to this totalitarianism, they expect and even accept it. "I don't particularly like it," one woman from Maryland explained, "but if it's for our safety I'm used to it. I'm used to getting pat down already when you go to the Redskins stadium."

Touchdown for Leviathan.
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Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.